Media and the State.Where is the Good Story to tell?

The Brouhaha around political allegiances of journalists and senior journalists in particular has caused much hyper-tension and ruckus in the stratified environment of those in the media who pontificate from their ivory towers. 

With so much too-ing and fro-ing with many good arguments in between, the intellectual challenge of sifting through the good and the bad of the arguments and to try to, at least for my own sake, make heads or tails of the contested notion of journalism, but more importantly of its relation to power, has prompted me to express my opinion on the saga.

In South Africa, the media has historically been controlled by a small elite who in conjunction with successive colonial and apartheid states have colluded to manufacture a world view which would support and maintain the status quo. In this regard not much has changed. The press has both been an ally and an opponent of these successive states and post 1994 the dividing lines between who supports and who opposes the state has become, much like our society, nebulous.

It is no surprise then that in the last decade we have seen the State and the ruling party not only use government resources but also private capital to form alliances and nurturing environments in which an alternative press, more supportive of the ruling elite, might emerge. Besides the State broadcaster(as opposed to a Public broadcaster), we have seen the emergence of the New Age and the purchase of Independent Media by a “black owned group”  with its stated aims of producing  a focus on government`s “good Story”. The fact that this (good story) was hard to come by and that due to the many blatant blunders of grotesque corruption and looting engaged by some in the ruling party their good news message has had to be tempered with some strong critique, is beside the point for now and deserves its own consideration at another time.

Media has always been a contested terrain, with historical examples of those in power consistently trying to silence or shut it down. However, the modern era has brought the modern media under the tutelage and control of interest groups in particular but power more generally, as our own example has so clearly shown.

Even as the modern State was just emerging, Karl Marx, a vehement defender of a free press, had noted at the beginning of his career that “the question is not whether freedom of the press should exist, for it always exists. The question is whether freedom of the press is a privilege of a few people or the privilege of the human mind. The question is whether one sides wrongs should be the others rights. The question is whether `Freedom of the mind` has more rights than `freedom against the mind`”.

The mass media are, in classical Marxist terms, a 'means of production' which in capitalist society are in the hands of the ruling class. According to the classical Marxist position, the mass media simply disseminate the ideas and world views of the ruling class, and deny or defuse alternative ideas. This is very much in accord with Marx's argument that:

“The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.”

The form of the debate on social media and within the stratified environment of the media aristocracy has unfortunately, but certainly not accidentally focused on a narrative which places simply “whiteness” against “blackness” as two centres of power who are locked in a titanic battle to assert this “hegemony” over its subjects. It completely misses the manner in which the current ruling plutocracy (mostly white I am sure but with a liberal sprinkling of black) has entrenched itself into the fabric of the ruling party. This connection and relationship between the ruling party and the purveyors of whiteness is one that cannot simply be ignored or swept under the carpet. The ruling party cannot simply now acquire the mantle of the champion of blackness as if that was the true nature of the problem and as if that was the central concern of the 20 million impoverished South Africans. That the ruling party and successive governments since 1994 have been widely accused of implementing and leading a neoliberal immersion into the global political system which has left South Africa, not only poorer, but more unequal as well, remains a central element of the context under which this debate should occur. To leave this as an unspoken assumption leaves the debate poorer and less nuanced.

 A further nuance that should be joined to this debate is how the state has invested government  funds to assist their political allies to acquire Independent Media and build the New Age, as part of the reality which understands that in order to govern,  a ruling class forms and maintains its hegemony in civil society, i.e. by creating cultural and political consensus through unions, political parties, schools, media, the church, and other voluntary associations where hegemony is exercised by a ruling class over allied classes and social groups. Gramsci argues in his Prison Notebooks (which were written whilst he was incarcerated by Mussolini in Fascist Italy) that the way society is controlled and manipulated is of direct consequence of the practice of a ‘false consciousness’ and the creation of values and life choices that are to be followed.

Gone from the debate is the question of how the media exists as a vehicle and tool for consumerism to grow in which we are fed a combination of Editorial and Advertorials mixed with splashes of news, mostly devooid of context and analysis. It is this state of affairs where the media can be key to influencing the people it informs and instilling the thought that one must be a consumer and if not then at least aspire to be.

Gramsci may argue that the way in which the media operates could equate to what he envisaged when he talked about a ‘class struggle’ and the creation of values that others must follow. It is this situation where the ideological role of the media can be seen to influence the way in which people can decode and read advertisements, features, television programmes and any text which may hold a hidden meaning, therefore creating the possibility for media to become very powerful in terms of ideological control and leadership.

It is in this context that the current furore around senior journalists openly flying their colours as it were, that this debate should be located. It is this nexus between consent and force through which the ruling classes impose their hegemony that the true debate about journalist ethic and freedoms should begin.

Much has been said about the “balanced and critical” nature of the Independent Media by its defenders, and while this may be so, it completely ignores the central question. If the state ultimately controls society through this double edged consent and force, what is the role of the media in this regard? Is the media to be complicit in this process of manufacturing consent?  And while the question of whose hegemony is being manufactured is the central point of contention in the accusations made towards the Independent`s senior editors, the response from Vukani Mde that their closeness or attendance and even wearing of their colours at the ruling parties rallies and events has no bearing on the independent (excuse the pun) nature of their publications, I do think that this is not only a serious simplification, it is also a statement which is both naïve and ignorant of the nature of power.

Power and its exercise, as our forebears have discovered, requires checks and balances to ensure that power is exercised justly. One cannot be a player and referee, so to speak. As many will attest to, the limitations of our ruling party, while it operates within a broadly democratic space, is one in which dissent is not only viewed with suspicion but in which the odds are stacked against any person that may be even remotely oppositional.  Julius Malema, and so many others, who find themselves “in the cold”, would gladly confirm this. The connection between political careerism and patronage is well documented and we shall not further unpack this entrenched system of advancement within the ruling party at this stage, suffice to say that this connection is one of the most constant features of ANC rule over the last 20 years.  It is quite ambitious for Vukani to expect us to exclude this from the equation.

But, I hear you say, the senior Journalists and editors of the Independent are not seeking political office as some DA” baddy “recently did, and for which he promptly got the boot.  But in this straightforward and simplistic defense lie the unsaid and the unspoken.  Political careerism as we have seen, is not only located within the political manifesto and election list, it lies also in the other more lucrative access to jobs and opportunities. From tenders to board appointments and Ambassadorial posts and cushy jobs in state owned enterprises and “connected” private enterprises. How then can one, with a straight face say that the one is different to the other? Patronage and clientalism has much more nefarious methods and intentions than merely asserting that one’s political allegiance is solely confined to an electoral college.

The state remains the most important political organisation of society, as it reaches into virtually every aspect of our lives and is at the centre of a world of unseen and cloaked power. It ultimately serves the interest of the most powerful in our society. Whether they are companies, families or individuals. The state is the conduit through which these interest groups exercise their power. The state, government and by extension the ruling party are the actors and agents which ultimately carries out the exercise of power and important institutions such as the media are duty bound to maintain a discreet distance from these powers in order to at the very least strive towards the checks and balances which the fourth estate promises.

In conclusion, I must agree with Marx when he says that “outside restrictions imposed on intellectual life (Media being the terrain where the mind can exercise its freedom) negate this life instead of affirming it”. So while there are no restrictions which we or the state can or should impose on journalists that would automatically resolve this dichotomy which so virulently exploded in the “media debates”, we should nevertheless not forget that while we are fiddling on the roof, the true nefarious intentions of those who hold the power slips by unnoticed.

My advice to the Independent Media, and all other journalists would be this from Marx:

True censorship, rooted in the nature of freedom of the press itself is CRITICISM, but does not criticism lose its rational character if it is not open but secret….if it operates not with the sharp knife of reason but with the dull shears of arbitrary power, if it wants only to make criticisms but not take them…”